Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-02-21

Safely through another week
God has brought us on our way;
Let us now a blessing seek
Waiting in His courts to- day.
Professor Henry Eyre Brown, the or
ganist, rendered Satz No. /, in C minor,
by Thiele.
After running commentary on eppro-
PIRATE passages of scripture, the Rev. T.
Dewitt Talmsge, D. D., took for his text:
And ne changed his behavior before
them, and feigned himself mad in their
hands, and scrabbled on the door of the
gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his
beard. ri. Sam, xxi, -. He said:
There is one scene in the life of DAVID
that you may not nave pondered. You
have seen him with harp playing the
devil out of Saul; with sling, smashing
the skull of Goliath; with 8 sword, hack
ing to pieces the Philistines; with scep-
ter, ruling q vast realm; with q psalm,
gathering all nations into doxology; but
in my text, you have David playing the
fool. He has been anointed King, yet he
is in exile and passing incognito among
the Gathites. They begin to suspect who
he is, and say: 81 wonder if this is not
the warrior, King David? 1t looks like
him. Is not this the man about whom
they used to make poetry, and about
whom they composed dance, so that the
maidens of the city, reeling now on one
foot and now on the other, used to
sing: Saul has slain his housards, but
David has slain his tens of thousands?'
Yes, it is very much like David. 1t must
be David. 1t is David" David, to es-
cape their hands, pretends to be de-
mented. He said within himself: "If
ont orc syIlTr hnr of h.- 10
will not njure me. No one would be so
much of q coward as to assault q mad
man" So, one day, while these Gath
ties are watching David with increased
suspicion, they see him standing by the
door running his hands mean
inglessly up and down the
panels scrabbling on the door
as though he would climb up, his mouth
wide open, drooling Ike an infant.
suppose the boys of the streets threw
missiles at him; but the sober people of
the town said: This is not fair Do
you not see that he has lost his reason?
Do net touch this mailman. Hands off!
hands Off" So David escaped; but
what an exhibition he made of himself
before all the ages! There was ma jesty
in King Lear's madness after Regain and
Goneril, his daughters, had persuaded
him to Danish their sister Cordelia, and
All the friends of the drama have been
thrilled with that spectacular. The
craZiness of Meg Merrillies WAS weird
and imposing, and the most t-lllng pas
sage In Walter ScOtt's "Guy Mannering"
There was fascination about the insan-
ity of Alexander Cruden, who made the
best concordance of the Bible that the
world ever saw-made it between the
madhouses. Some time ago, while was
visiting the insane asylum at Blackwell s
Island, q demented woman came up to me
and said, in most tragic style:
God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to PERFORM
He plants his foot steps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
But there was nothing grand, nothing
weird, nothing majestic, nothing sub
lime ABOUT this stimulation on
the part of David. Instead Of trusting in
the Lord, as he had on other occasions,
he gathers before him Il vast audience of
all generations that were to come. AMI
standing on that conspicuous stage of
history, in the presence Of all the ages,
he impersonates the slavering idiot
"And he changed his behavior before
them, and feigned himself mad in their
hands, and scrabbled at the door of the
gate, and let his spittle fall upon his
beard"
Taking the behavior of David as sug-
gestion, wish TO tel you how many of
.he wise, and the brave, and the regal
sometimes play the fool. And in the first
place, | remark, that those men as badly
play the fool as this man of the text, who
in any crisis of life take their case out Of
the hand of God. David, in this case,
acted as though there were no God to lift
him out of the prediCament. WHAT a con-
trsst between his behavior, when this
brave little man stood up in front of the
giant ten feet in height, and looking into
his face, said "Thou CONTEST to me with
q sword, and with spear, and with a
shield; but | come to thee IN the name of
the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies
of Israel, whom thou hast defed. This
day will the Lord deliver thee into nine
hand, and | will smite thee, and take
thine head from thee, and | Will give the
carcases of the hosts of the Philistines
this day unto the fowls OF the air, and to
the wild beasts of the earth, thst ell the
earth may know that there is God in
Israel"-between that time and this time,
when he debased himself, and bedra ggled
his manhood, and affected insanity in Or
DER Jn6b ne might aScape from lle grip OF
the Gatbites. In the one case he played
the hero. In the other case he played the
fool. SO does every man who, the
great crisis of life, takes his
case out Of the hand OF God. The
life of the most insignificant man in this
house is too vast for any human manage
meut. One time, returning from the west,
l very easily got on the locomotive while
passing over the plains, and talked with
the engineer; but, coming on toward the
Allegheny mountaSS, thought | would
like TO sit on the locomotive as it
came down from the mountains amidst
that most wonderful scenery on this con-
tinent. | asked the engineer if l might
ride, but he courteously denied me, for
there the grade is so steep, and so wind
ing, and SO perilous, that he must not
have any one on the locomotive who may
divert his attention when eye, and ham,,
and foot, and brain must be concentered,
ready for the most sudden emergency.
Well, my frien:s S, life is so steep, and so
perilous, and so exposed to sudden sur
prises, that none but the Lord Almighty
can guide and engineer it, and our disas
tiers come from the fact that we want TO
H.